


The Visitation

by sunsetmog



Category: Doctor Who, Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-26
Updated: 2005-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:55:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One minute they’d been marching down into the deserted valley, the next thing the green jackets knew, they were faced with the unexpected, momentary arrival of a dusty blue box and a nonchalantly leaning stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Visitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abbichicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/gifts).



> Originally posted [here](http://sunsetmog-fics.livejournal.com/21055.html) in July 2005.
> 
> Original notes: Written as part of abbichicken’s birthday present. I’ve taken Sharpe’s origins to be entirely Yorkshire (TV canon) as opposed to a mixture of London and the North (book canon). This lacks a deep and meaningful storyline because frankly, I just wanted to imagine Sean Bean and Christopher Eccleston without any clothes on. So shoot me. Titles are from Doctor Who episodes. Set prior to the doctor meeting Rose. Beta by kraken_wakes

**(i) The Doctor Dances**  
"And again, just who the _bloody hell_ are you?" Captain Richard Sharpe picked his words carefully, his fingers sliding their familiar way around the trigger of his rifle. He never liked having to ask more than once, especially not with cheeky bastards who kept on smiling even in the face of a cocked rifle. He stamped his feet, tired from too many hours on the move over rough, drought-baked roads that threw up enough dust to cause his mouth to dry and his eyes to water. He eyed the man carefully, his gaze sliding up onto the hills, looking for any signs of other movement in the parched trees. 

"Who am I?" The man grinned, folding his arms and leaning nonchalantly against a large, dusty blue box. The same large, dusty blue box the man had been leaning nonchalantly against for the last half hour. One minute they'd been marching down into the deserted valley, the next thing the green jackets knew, they were faced with the unexpected, momentary arrival of a dusty blue box and a nonchalantly leaning stranger. 

Sharpe narrowed his eyes. "I'll ask you one last time, stranger. Who are you, and what's your business here?" He clearly wasn't Spanish, or Portuguese, or French. He seemed as English as Sharpe, - as _Northern_ as Sharpe - which probably meant that if he was unwilling to yield any information at all, that he was up to no good. Sharpe was good at wheedling information out of those who seemed unwilling to talk, and he had the bruises to prove it. He rolled on the balls of his feet, angry and exhausted. They'd marched a good fifteen miles today, over hard, parched terrain, and the last thing he wanted was a confrontation. He wanted to sink down beside a camp fire and take the weight off his feet, maybe have a drink and play cards with Harper. Harper always won, but that was hardly surprising since the pack was missing a few vital cards and was marked liked you wouldn't believe. "Your business," Sharpe repeated, growing frustrated. 

"My business? I don't quite know yet, sometimes I just end up travelling through a place and nothing happens, sometimes I turn up and I end up getting involved in something important." He looked around, seemingly unperturbed by the scrape of Sharpe's rifle and the nod of Sharpe's head towards Sergeant Harper for back up. "Earth, early nineteenth century. Rise and fall of Napoleon. Good period for the British army this, great uniforms." 

Sharpe exchanged glances with Harper. He shuffled uncomfortably in his green jacket, aware of being the object of the stranger's gaze. 

"Do you want me to shoot him, sir?" Harper grinned, squaring his shoulders and lifting his rifle up. 

The man raised his eyebrows. "I'm the doctor. Don't shoot me yet, this conversation was only just getting interesting." 

"A doctor, huh?" Sharpe indicated his tired bunch of riflemen, ten steps behind him, dust-covered, exhausted and starving. "Got anything to patch this lot up?" 

The doctor grinned. "Not _a_ doctor, _the_ doctor. Definitely not that kind of doctor." 

Sharpe shook his head. "I don't give a shit about your fancy names, _doctor_ , I just want to know why you're holding me and my men up. We've got things that need doing." 

"Well, Captain, why don't you send your man here back to look after your men, and you can just follow me over here and discuss what my business here might be." The doctor smiled again, meeting Sharpe's gaze with bright eyes and a wrinkle of his nose.

"Sir?" Harper was watching the doctor quizzically, taking in the heavy boots, dark grey trousers and leather jacket. The doctor, catching him looking, waggled his eyebrow. Harper suddenly found it prudent to take a great interest in the dusty gravel beneath the toe of his boot. 

"Take the men and set up camp for the night, Harper. I want a word with the doctor." Sharpe indicated the tired riflemen with a look that would brook no disagreement. 

The doctor smiled and opened the door to the Tardis. "After you," he said, and Sharpe narrowed his eyes. 

"You want me to talk to you _inside_ your box?" 

"Oh yes," the doctor smiled again, rolling his shoulder. "Sorry, I've got such a crick in my neck, I've just saved an entire race of people who have evolved from the common farmyard chicken. The clucking doesn't half give you a headache." 

Sharpe blinked. 

"And the _food_ ," the doctor continued, "it's eggs this and eggs that, after two days I was contemplating pretending to be lactose-intolerant, except it would be rude and I'm nothing if not exceptionally polite. Cup of tea? Good thing you can't milk a chicken, else I'd be right off tea too."

Sharpe opened his mouth. Never normally short of words, he had suddenly found out what it was like to be speechless. "Um," he said. The doctor had evidently given up on Sharpe leading the way into the Tardis, for he'd gone on inside, sticking his head out to hurry Sharpe up. "Come on, else your tea will be cold." 

Richard Sharpe wasn't often caught on the hop, but there was something about this grinning stranger and the promise of a cup of tea in a box that was smaller than his tent that caught his attention and imagination. He shot a quick glance towards his men. They were watching him, sniffing loudly, dust-covered and exhausted. Sharpe nodded towards Harper. "Set up camp for the night, Pat," he indicated the blue box. "I'll just be in here." 

"Right then, sir," Harper blinked. "You'll just be in a tiny hut drinking tea with a doctor. Of course." 

Sharpe shook his head. "Not _a_ doctor, _the_ doctor."

"That's right." the doctor popped his head around the Tardis door again. "He was holding a china milk jug, "Cream?" 

Sharpe blinked. And nodded. "Got any sugar?" he asked, and although he would have sworn otherwise, there was a possibility his voice had wavered. 

**(ii) The Long Game**  
"Let me get this straight," Sharpe said, clearing his throat, "you're not from this planet." 

The doctor shook his head. "Nope." He handed Sharpe a cup of tea—his third—and leant back against the Tardis mainframe. "Not only that, but I'm a bloody good looking alien." 

Sharpe raised an eyebrow. 

The doctor shrugged. "Is it the ears? It took me a while to get used to them, but I'm about there now. Beginning to get a feel for them." 

Sharpe cleared his throat again. He was confused; he wasn't used to talking about the relative attractiveness of strange men whose tiny blue box turned out to be the size of Wellington's war quarters. He wasn't a complete stranger to assessing the relative attractiveness of the occasional man, however, and Sharpe was beginning to think he could agree with the doctor if he could only get a sentence out with hiccoughing and behaving like an idiot. He remembered all those rumours Hakeswill had spread amongst the British Army about Sharpe and Lawford when they'd been out in India, and how he used to imagine Hakeswill's face if he ever realised he'd been spreading the gospel truth. He'd always thought it was something never to be alluded to, this sometime desperation that overtook the men at times of great peril, when they were stuck out in the middle of bleedin' nowhere and they thought they were going to die. Or sometimes, just when they were bored and in the mood for cock. Anyway, one thing Sharpe _did_ know was that you didn't just bring it up and talk about it like you would about a woman. It was supposed to be secret. 

The doctor offered him a biscuit, watching him seriously. Sharpe could see him watching, his gaze intently fixed on Sharpe. When Sharpe turned to meet his gaze, the doctor's expression changed suddenly, grinning and brightening and winking. "Biscuit, Richard Sharpe?"

Their fingers touched. 

It sure as hell wasn't supposed to be something up front and obvious and like _this_. 

"Is there any more tea going?" Sharpe asked, finally, when the silence had got too much for him. He didn't know how long he'd been in this... Tardis, but it was bound to be dark outside. The men would be bedding down for the night, shooting muted glances towards the dusty blue box which had arrived in the middle of the dry Portuguese landscape whilst they'd been looking the other way. Harper would be sitting up by the fire, chewing the tired remains of a bag of baccy they'd found on the body of a French soldier the day before. He'd have his rifle cocked and ready, leaning up against his shoulder as he kept his eye fixed firmly on the Tardis doors. He'd know well enough not to disturb Sharpe until he heard sounds of a brawl, but Harper wasn't going to be taking the silent disappearance of his captain into a tiny box for hours at face value. 

"Could be," the doctor told him, eyeing the teapot. He was drinking from a thick, clay mug he'd picked up around the year 760 BC, his biscuit perched on a saucer from BHS circa 1983, Basingstoke. 

"Why _are_ you here?" Sharpe asked again. 

The doctor grinned. "Don't know yet." He shrugged, and helped himself to another oat and raison flat bottomed biscuit. "Something will probably turn up, or I'll just end up going somewhere where there is trouble." 

Sharpe raised an eyebrow. "Trouble follows you around then, too?" He gulped down the last of his tea (floral patterned china, circa 1953, Paris), and grinned back. 

The doctor nodded. "Magnet for trouble, me." 

"Two of a kind," Sharpe agreed. 

The doctor looked at him, and something inside of Sharpe twisted, painfully. 

**(iii) Boomtown**  
Sharpe didn't want to think about the logistics of sticking a bedroom this size into a tiny blue box, but he couldn't really help it. "How...?" he asked, finally. 

The doctor, who was busy pushing him down and back against the mattress, grinned. "Everything's relative," he said, and Sharpe shrugged. It was good enough for now, when he could feel his erection pressed up against the thick cotton of his dusty trousers. He twisted against the mattress, revelling in the comfort of a real, soft mattress with a feather-filled quilt and patterned eiderdown. He couldn't move properly; he'd never slept anywhere so luxurious. Good thing he wasn't planning on sleeping here; Sharpe was too used to uncomfortable floors and bed rolls to be able to sleep somewhere so... affluent. The doctor was above him, smiling. 

Sharpe hadn't expected the doctor's sudden movement across the main control room. Sharpe had just supped the last of his tea and decided that he really needed to get back outside and resume control of his men, when he caught the doctor's movement out of the corner of his eye. "Thanks," Sharpe had said, lamely, depositing his cup on its saucer and placing it carefully on the corner of the console. "That was good tea." 

The doctor was suddenly in front of him. "Do you ever get bored of fighting?" he asked without preamble. 

Sharpe shrugged. "I reckon it's the only thing I've ever been good at," he told the doctor after a moment. 

"Don't you ever get sick of not having somewhere you can call home?" Something flickered darkly in the depths of the doctor's eyes. 

Sharpe watched him without moving. "The army's my home," He muttered, finally, "I've never had a proper home, you might say. At least I've got regular pay and regular meals, and I sometimes get to kill a right bastard."

The doctor grinned. "So you just wander around, barging in and doing what you think is best, then?" 

Sharpe laughed. "How did you know? You been following me or summat?" 

The doctor's face cracked into a smile. "Maybe I can just see you in me," he said, and he breathed and kissed Sharpe. 

Kissing a bloke was altogether different from kissing a girl. Sharpe had been with some girls who had been with more than their fair share of men, some so rough even he wouldn't go near them if he was desperate, but none of them kissed like a man. And the few men who Sharpe had fucked under cover of darkness and desperation, none of them were anything like the doctor. 

The doctor was a strange mix of clumsy enthusiasm and self-assured touches, his mouth warm and red and tasting like tea and sticky oats and honey. He kissed without touching Sharpe at first, leaning forward across the console like they were miles apart. But as Sharpe began to kiss back, his tongue sweeping the doctor's; he groaned his desperation against the doctor's mouth and the doctor closed the distance between them. Sharpe pressed back against him, suddenly all too aware of how long it had been since he'd had any contact at all with another person. Suddenly all too aware of the different type of _need_ he felt when he was with another man. Nothing like the soft curves and warm breath of a woman, there was something altogether primeval about being like _this._

The doctor's jacket creaked as Sharpe started to shift it off his shoulders, the leather soft and cracking beneath Sharpe's calloused fingers. "Is the door locked?" Sharpe asked, his breath suddenly hurried. He blushed as he pulled away, seeing the pink flush across the doctor's cheek and his lips. He couldn't remember ever being with another man where it had been light; when their eyes could meet against a flashing console Sharpe couldn't even fathom, let alone understand. His memories were always shrouded in heat and darkness, and this was different. 

"It is now," the doctor told him, holding up something small and black and waving it in the general direction of the Tardis door. "Automatic locking." He shrugged out of his jacket, dropping it to the floor. "Come on," he said, and Sharpe found himself following the doctor out of the control room and down a corridor until they found themselves in a large, luxurious bedroom. Sharpe had tried to marvel at its size, but the doctor shushed him with another kiss, pushing him down against the covers. "I think we both need this," he said, and Sharpe agreed. He didn't want to ask any more questions. 

The doctor proved rather adept at finding his way around Sharpe's uniform, as well. He clearly hadn't been joking when he'd commented on the British Army uniforms earlier. 

"How do you know all of this stuff," Sharpe muttered, his dusty palms pushing up against the doctor's chest. There was the brush of dark hair against his palms, wiry and soft and providing one hell of a distraction to Sharpe, who was used to partners who tried to disguise the long periods they went without washing by covering themselves in foul-smelling poultices and powders. The doctor was fresh and heavy and all too interested in the underside of Sharpe's jaw, his tongue lapping a pathway against the hollows of Sharpe's neck. "About our uniforms and stuff, if you're..." _an alien_. He stopped, his hands sliding their way beneath the waistband of the doctor's trousers. The fastenings were strange and the doctor merely smiled and brushed Sharpe's hand out of the way, before undoing them himself. 

"Comes of being too old to know better," the doctor told him, his voice low and ticklish against Sharpe's ear. "And I see things differently; backwards and forwards as well as side to side, if you want to know the truth. I did mention I travelled in time, didn't I?" 

Sharpe nodded his head and concentrated on shifting his hips so the doctor could help remove his own trousers, his shirt hastily pulled open so the doctor could run a hand from hard nipple to hard nipple. He wasn't going to pretend to understand, not when he could feel two tell-tale thumps from beneath his hands as they wove their way back down towards the doctor's cock. He'd been close enough to too many people to know a heartbeat when he heard one, and he was as sure as anything he could feel _two._

"I could show you, if you'd like," the doctor offered, pushing his own trousers down to his knees. He pressed his cock to Sharpe's, hearing the hiss of Sharpe's breath at the all-too-welcome contact. "You, me and the Tardis. We could go anywhere."

Sharpe's hips shifted, seemingly of their own accord, grinding up against the doctor's erection. The dry burn of attraction and desire made his breath catch in his throat, and his hand slid between them, grasping both their cocks in his fist. He moved so that he caught the wetness from the end of his own erection against his palm, sliding it down the hard shaft as a makeshift lubricant until he met the doctor's wet tip against the soft, taut underbelly of his own erection. "You'd take me with you?" Sharpe asked, his breath tight. His thumb caught the head of the doctor's erection, and the sharp intake of breath was enough to suggest that the doctor was as turned on as he was. 

"I could show you things you'd never seen before," the doctor told him, and Sharpe's gaze met his. 

The doctor's eyes were dark, shadowed and distant. Desperate. 

"I think you already are," Sharpe admitted, with a gasp. The doctor's hand had joined his, jerking the lengths of their mutual erections between their slick-sticky-hot bodies. "But I think you're asking me to desert." 

The doctor shrugged and pressed his mouth to Sharpe's. His kiss was hard and desperate and Sharpe kissed back, unable to do anything but respond. Their hands jerked between them, the rhythm staccato and uncomfortable and Sharpe thought he'd rip the arms off anyone or anything that tried to stop them from reaching their natural conclusion. 

"Do we win?" Sharpe asked, a moment or so later. His breath came in gasps as he rubbed himself against the doctor's thighs, his cock hot and tight and slick with their combined pre-come. 

"Win what?" 

"The war." 

"Does it make a difference?" the doctor asked, his hand covering Sharpe's and squeezing gently. Their rhythm was speeding up, hot and fast and uneven. 

"If you're asking me to leave my men," Sharpe looked up and for a moment his eyes pleaded. He'd spent his whole life desperate to glean the respect of both his betters and his subordinates, and for the first time in his life, he'd achieved that. He was one hell of a fighter and he couldn't imagine a life that didn't involve the British Army. Even back when he was in India and he was contemplating running, he'd never seen anything but a life constantly on the road, living from day to day, hand to mouth. He'd never had anything resembling security in his life—until now, when being an officer was as near as he'd ever got - and he was fairly sure that the doctor wasn't offering him anything similar just yet. "If you were asking me to leave them, I'd have to know my men would be safe." 

The doctor grinned, and for a moment, he stilled. There was a long pause. He nodded, his thumb soft against Sharpe's cheek. "You'd have made a good companion," he said finally, and sweat beaded on his forehead. "You'd have liked travelling." 

Sharpe grinned up at him. "Aye. I think I would have done." And his hips jerked upwards, out of his own control, brushing the length of the doctor's erection. 

The doctor laughed, and moved, the pressure of his hand against their mutual, slippery erections doing terrible things to Sharpe's mind. 

"I'd have hated this bed though," Sharpe told him, his breathing laboured. The slap of fingers against taut, slippery skin echoed across the room. "Too bloody soft." 

"I love this bed," the doctor told him, and his eyes were dark and warm and deep.

"Good we found out now," Sharpe ground out, the room hazy and red and blurred. His hand was moving faster and his stomach was twisting in his gut, desperate and hot and needy and _close._

The doctor shuddered above him, "Exactly," he breathed, and he was coming; hot pulse-breaths of sticky come that hit the base of Sharpe's cock and the very bottom of his belly in uneven bursts. 

"Exactly," Sharpe echoed, as the very edges of his perception merged with the hazy redness of his own desire. The doctor kissed him, hot and soft and _right_ , and he was coming, his orgasm pulling at the desperate tips of his fingers, burning like fire down across his skin. 

The doctor rolled over, sinking down onto the bed beside Sharpe. They lay, half-clothed and breath coming in heavy gasps, staring up at the ceiling. Sharpe wondered how many nights it'd been since he'd slept in a room as enclosed as this, and he missed the stars and the sky. Sharpe's thigh touched the doctor's, and neither of them moved. 

The doctor turned to face him. "I meant what I said, Richard Sharpe," he said, softly, "You'd have made a bloody good companion." 

"Aye, I know." Sharpe said, with a grin. "I would have been the best." 

From outside came the distant sound of Harper's rifle butt banging against the Tardis. And a soft but unmistakeable, "Captain?" 

"Duty calls," the doctor said, and Sharpe nodded. 

Sharpe busied himself with the filthy fastenings of his uniform. The dust from the long march had ground into the depths of the fabric, causing everything to have a dull, reddish tinge. He wanted a drink. 

He wanted to stay here. 

"Thanks for the offer, doctor," he said finally, awkwardly. The doctor was sat on the edge of the bed, doing up his trousers. His shirt hung open. "We'd have made a good pair." 

The doctor nodded. Grinned. His eyes danced. "Scrap that. Both from the north? We would have been unstoppable. The universe would have cowered before us."

"Yeah, but how many planets have a north?" Sharpe asked, pulling his jacket on self-consciously. The green jacket was filthy, and there was nothing Sharpe loved more than his jacket. 

The doctor kissed him, slow and warm and smiling. "You wouldn't believe it if I told you," he said, and his hand found Sharpe's for a moment. He nodded, his eyes dark. 

Sharpe grinned, pushed open the bedroom door and headed across the main console room towards the doors, where Harper and his men were waiting for him.


End file.
